Joan Miró

Joan Miró’s painting The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) brings together the real and the imaginary, abstraction and figuration, and image and text in a way that would characterize much of his work to come. In the canvas—a landscape filled with personal symbols and evocations of life on his family’s farm in Montroig, Spain, such as a tree trunk sprouting a leaf and the eponymous hunter carrying a freshly killed rabbit—he rendered the everydayness of the farm with a poetic intensity. This impetus to reveal the marvelous in the quotidian attracted the attention of André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, who acquired The Hunter in 1925. Breton would later deem Miró’s arrival in Paris in the early 1920s “an important stage in the development of surrealist art.” 1 Indeed Miró’s studio in Paris soon became an “avant-garde laboratory”2 and gathering place for artists and writers, including André Masson (whose studio adjoined Miró’s), Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos.
According to Breton, the Surrealists sought to liberate “the real functioning of the mind” through “a pure psychic automatism,” free of “any control exercised by reason.”3 Their approach to art making, as defined by Breton, inspired Miró. He later recounted, “Rather than setting out to paint something, I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself….,The first stage is free, unconscious.” But, he continued, “The second stage is carefully calculated.”4 The Birth of the World reflects this blend of spontaneity and deliberation. Although its brushy, atmospheric background was freely applied, the individual motifs and their arrangement were sketched out in advance. In this and many of his following works, Miró attempted to give free rein to the unconscious, as the Surrealists did, at the same time as he sought to formulate a new pictorial language.
Beginning in the late 1920s, Miró embarked on a period of experimentation with mediums and techniques, attacking the limits of painting in order to reinvigorate it. He successively made works on unprimed canvases, white grounds, flocked paper, cardboard, Masonite, and copper; collages, paintings based on collage, and so-called “drawing collages”; and constructions and objects. These experiments also included engagements with art history and with language. In Dutch Interior (I), part of a series based on 17th-century Dutch genre paintings, Miró reimagined illusionistic space, compressing and flattening the scene of the original painting into planes of non-naturalistic, unmodulated color. Later, the aerial, calligraphic “Hirondelle Amour” exemplified his peinture-poésie, or painting-poetry, as biomorphic forms and words seem to float in suspension above a blue expanse.
Still Life with Old Shoe brought an end to an intense, decade-long period of experimentation, as Miró announced his intention to do “something absolutely different.”5 The canvas, which he painted in Paris as the Spanish Civil War raged in his home country, marked his temporary return to working from life. It straddles the line between still life and landscape, even as the saturated, acidic colors and disproportionately scaled objects undermine its title’s—and Miró’s—proclaimed adherence to reality.
By 1939, World War II had come to the European continent. In this climate of danger and human catastrophe, Miró created the Constellations, a series of 23 gouaches on paper, including The Escape Ladder, which gave form to the transcendence and escape he longed for during those years. Interweaving his distinctive visual vocabulary with cosmic and earthly themes, these intimately sized works were easily transportable. In flight from the German invasion, he carried the earliest gouaches in the series, begun in France, back with him to the relative safety of Spain. Breton would later reflect that “Miró, at this hour of extreme anguish unfurl[ed] the full range of his voice,” sounding the same “note of wild defiance of the hunter expressed by the grouse’s love song.”6 After the war, Miró gained international recognition as he continued to experiment freely with different mediums, including ceramics, printmaking, book illustration, and sculpture.
Introduction by Natalie Dupêcher, independent scholar, 2017
André Breton, “Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism” (1941), translated in André Breton, Surrealism and Painting, trans. Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 70.
Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, trans. Norbert Guterman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1962), 137.
Joan Miró, in “Joan Miró: Comment and Interview,” by James Johnson Sweeney, in Partisan Review (New York) 15, no. 2 (February 1948); translated in Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews.
Joan Miró to Pierre Matisse, January 12, 1937; translated in Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 146.
André Breton, “Joan Miró: Constellations” (1958), in Surrealism and Painting, 263.
- Introduction
- Joan Miró i Ferrà ( mi-ROH, US also mee-ROH, Catalan: [ʒuˈam miˈɾo j fəˈra]; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult to classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
- Wikidata
- Q152384
- Introduction
- Miró attended the art school of Francisco Galí for 3 years from 1911, then attended the academy Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, until 1918, where he met the potter Josep Llorens Artigas. In 1917, he met Francis Picabia. In 1919, Miró went to Paris, where he settled more permanently from 1920. In Paris, he participated in the Dada movement, renewed his acquaintance with Picasso, who introduced him to Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, and Tristan Tzara. In 1924, Miró met André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Éluard, and joined the Surrealist group, whose manifesto he signed. His mature works adhered to a vocabulary of simple shapes and symbols, often described as childlike. Comment on works: abstract
- Nationalities
- Spanish, Catalan
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Ceramicist, Decorative Artist, Illustrator, Painter, Sculptor
- Names
- Joan Miró, Joán Miró, Joan Miro, Joan Miró Ferrà, Z'uán Miró, Joan Miró Ferra, Z'uʼan Miro, Miluo, Miro
- Ulan
- 500014094
Exhibitions
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523: Joan Miró’s Self-Portrait I
Fall 2020–Spring 2021
MoMA
Collection gallery
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517: Surrealist Objects
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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522: Responding to War
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Joan Miró: Birth of the World
Feb 24–Jun 15, 2019
MoMA
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Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second
World War Oct 24, 2015–Apr 3, 2016
MoMA
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Joan Miró has
200 exhibitionsonline.
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Joan Miró Man with a Moustache 1917
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Joan Miró Portrait of Enric Cristòfol Ricart Barcelona, winter or early spring 1917
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Joan Miró Still Life -- Glove and Newspaper Paris, February-March 1921
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Joan Miró Still Life I Montroig and Paris, July 1922-spring 1923
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Joan Miró Still Life II Montroig and Paris, July 1922- spring 1923
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Joan Miró The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) Montroig, July 1923-winter 1924
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Joan Miró The Family 1924
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Joan Miró The Birth of the World Montroig, late summer-fall 1925
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Joan Miró The Statue 1926
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Joan Miró Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird Montroig, mid-August-December 1926
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Cadavre Exquis, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) Nude 1926–27
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Joan Miró Dutch Interior (I) Montroig, July-December 1928
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Joan Miró Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 2) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 4) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 6) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 8) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio10) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 12) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 14) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 18) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) 1927–28, published 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Study for Dutch Interior, I 1928
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Joan Miró Final study for Dutch Interior (I) 1928
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Joan Miró Collage 1929
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Joan Miró Study for Portrait of Mistress Mills in 1750 1929
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Joan Miró Study for Portrait of Mistress Mills in 1750 1929
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Joan Miró Study for Portrait of Mistress Mills in 1750 1929
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Joan Miró Final study for Portrait of Mistress Mills in 1750 1929
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Joan Miró Portrait of Mistress Mills in 1750 Paris, winter-spring 1929
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Joan Miró Relief Construction Montroig, August-November 1930
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Joan Miró Lithograph I 1930
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Joan Miró L'Arbre des voyageurs (The Tree of Travelers) 1930, prints executed 1929
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Joan Miró Plate (facing page 24) from L'Arbre des voyageurs (The Tree of Travelers) 1929, published 1930
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Joan Miró Plate (facing page 40) from L'Arbre des voyageurs (The Tree of Travelers) 1929, published 1930
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Joan Miró Plate (facing page 56) from L'Arbre des voyageurs (The Tree of Travelers) 1929, published 1930
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Joan Miró Plate (facing page 64) from L'Arbre des voyageurs (The Tree of Travelers) 1929, published 1930
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Joan Miró Object Montroig, mid-July-November 1931
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Joan Miró Bather Montroig, October 1932
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Joan Miró Painting Barcelona, June 13, 1933
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Joan Miró Drawing-Collage 1933
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Joan Miró Enfances (Childhoods) 1932–33, published 1933
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Joan Miró Plate (folio 5) from Enfances (Childhoods) 1932–33, published 1933
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